Power Map

CLIENT: Microsoft

ROLE: UX/UI Designer

Growing out of the Worldwide Telescope project from
Microsoft Research, Power Map looked to build an accessible
data visualization tool that could would allow customers to
look at information in new ways. I led the initial visual
and interaction design work, helping to explore and develop
user-centric solutions as we built a new medium for
storytelling through analytics.

Full view of the application with rendered data with
playback control visible

With many projects in SBG (Small Business Group), the
technology drives the interest but the user experience
solidifies the product. The team needed a steady hand. One
that could deliver cohesive vision covering interaction and
visual design to transform the concept from a good idea to
friendly and usable product.

Defining your geographic data

One challenge was to analyze and deliver recommendations
for improving the intitial experience of geocoding your
location values onto the map. The initial approach was
convoluted as it included all data columns as possible
sources, even if they weren't geographic data. Having these
options visible was confusing to early alpha user and had
been communicated via direct feedback

In (Figures 2-4), I concepted a few
different approaches to reduce possible using simple text
parsing of the column headers. Values that we had high
confidence (or matched) we're shown, other were left
unconfirmed, but could be added for use manually. I worked
with our user researcher to evaluate these solutions.
Figure 4 was the preferred direction with
our customers.

Fig. 4 - After testing, this
version was implemented in the beta application.

In addition to the prior work, I also pitched some blue-sky
concepts for the initial step that we evaluated with our
customers. They tested favorably, but needed many more
resources and time we didn't have available.
(Figure 5)

Fig. 5 - These concepts sought to
explore a highly visual interface on startup to
give users an instant view as an alternative to the
primary method of visualizing data. Tap image to toggle view

UI elements

In addition to my UX responsibilities, I also led the
design of the visual direction for the beta product. This
included creating our ribbon icons and developing unqiue
and patterned styles for various controls, map overlay
visualizations and application shell elements.

Fig. 6 - Shown here is a cohesive
set of ribbon icons for various actions.

Fig. 7 - Here you can see the UI I
developed for the playback control. It allowed user
various functions including "time chunking".